Travel Ban Challenge to Be Heard by Supreme Court

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would hear the challenge of the most recent travel ban implemented by President Donald Trump.

Oral arguments on the challenge will be heard starting in April.

In an order of just two sentences, the court announced it would consider questions related to whether the latest ban is a violation of immigration law and the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

In 2017, justices allowed the complete travel ban to go into effect that was issued in September pending appeal.

The eventual ruling by the court will determine what happens to the third attempt the Trump administration has made to restrict the entry into the U.S. of people from a number of countries that are Muslim-majority, and is the second time the U.S. high court agreed to hear this issue.

A case that concerned the legality of a prior version of this same ban was on the calendar of justices for earlier, but was then removed by the justices after Trump issued the most recent version in September.

Lower courts have partially blocked this ban in two different challenges. A panel of three judges ruled in 2017 that the ban exceeded the authority of the President, calling it executive override of wide swaths of the immigration law that Congress used its considered judgement to make law.

The judges also wrote that the indefinite entry suspensions of the ban constitute discrimination by nationality in issuance of visas for immigrants.

They added that the ban did not explain adequately why people from specific countries were a danger.

The state of Hawaii has challenged the petition saying that the proclamation purports banning more than 150 million aliens from the country based on just nationality.

The White House administration maintains that the President is within his power to install the travel bans to protect the country’s national security.

Noel Francisco the Solicitor General argued that the Acts of Congress and the Constitution confer that the President has broad authority to restrict or suspend entry of aliens in to the U.S. when he considers it in the best interest of the nation.

He noted that the most recent travel ban was put into effect following a review worldwide by several government agencies.